A Technology Upgrade You’ll Never Notice

Next summer, Information Services will upgrade a system you rely on every day, and you’ll never know it.  

Some of the systems affected by the upgrade: 

• All official University websites, including the University homepage 
• The single sign-on service that’s used by hundreds of applications like Workday, Banner, Blackboard, Library systems, and more 
• Clearpass, which makes sure every computer is safe to join the campus network 
• WordPress, home to course discussions, project sites, research lab sites, and student organization sites 
• Research servers, including one focusing on ADHD research 
• Open Room, used for study room reservation in the Law Library 
• Dynamic Forms, used by many offices to collect information 
• ClockWork, used by Disability Services to facilitate testing for students with disabilities 
• And hundreds of other servers 

The IS Enterprise Computing team is working to refresh the computer cluster that houses more than 300 applications used by everyone on campus. The effort will be led by Senior System Administrators Vinny Petrone and SashkoStefanovski, as well as Clovis Khoury, Director of Enterprise Computing. 

Infrastructure systems like the computer cluster are refreshed on a five-year cycle. Troy Boroughs, Assistant Vice President of Systems & Networks says, “Computing infrastructure experiences wear and tear just like any mechanical device and will eventually break down. We replace it so it doesn’t break at an inconvenient time and disrupt critical UR operations (e.g., classes, student registration, admission, etc.). In addition, the pace of change for computing hardware/software is rapid, so what may have been state-of-the-art five years ago is now considered ancient and no longer supported by vendors. If we don’t keep up, we may find ourselves with an unplanned outage that could take days or weeks to resolve. So, our philosophy has been ‘an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.’” 

For the current hardware, IS decided to stretch the cycle to seven years. Doing so saved the University money. And the decision has been validated: since the computer cluster was put into service in 2020 there have been no unplanned outages. Clovis says, “This hardware has been very reliable, and we would not replace it if wasn’t approaching end-of-support life from the vendor in September 2027.” 

The move of hundreds of servers to the new system will be transparent to the campus. “The switchover will not be noticed by the end-user. Once the new hardware is bought and installed, we can move all the servers to it from the old hardware. The move will take place during the summer of 2027. Typically, the servers are moved to the new hardware during off hours, with minimal delay in response time for the duration of the move, which is measured in seconds,” says Clovis. 

Through the regular refreshment of systems like the IS computer cluster, done seamlessly from the perspective of the campus community, the IS Enterprise Applications team ensures that the University’s technology infrastructure is strong and up to date. And all of the work, which is already underway, means that the technology changes will be invisible, allowing everyone to get their important work done without disruption.